Glendalough Fair (18 page)

“We’ll let the men rest for a bit here,” Louis said to Aileran. “I’ll speak with these fellows.” Aileran turned and called the order down the line. The men, however, did not sit immediately but rather continued to shuffle forward, closer to the food, closer to the women, before finding a spot of grass on which to fall.

The big man by the fire watched Louis approach. There was no fear on his face, no anxiety, just a soft look of curiosity.

“Lord, will you join me in my dinner?” the man asked, gesturing with a ladle toward the pot.

“Pray, call me captain, not lord,” Louis said. The aroma from the stew pot swirled around him and he wanted desperately to accept the offer of dinner, but instead he asked, “Have you food enough for all my men?”

“No, Captain, I certainly do not,” the big man said.

“Then I fear I must decline,” Louis said. He was happy to accept the privileges of rank: a bigger tent, a servant, a finer horse. But he would never eat while his men went hungry. The big man shrugged and Louis took a seat on a stool beside him.

“I am Crimthann,” the man said. “You’ve heard of me, I have no doubt, me and my players?”

Louis shook his head.

“What?” Crimthann said, and he appeared to be genuinely surprised. “You look to be a man of the world, and by your accent, sir, I judge you are not from this country. Yet you speak our language tolerably well, so you must have been some time here. How is it you have not heard of Crimthann?”

It was Louis’s turn to shrug. “I have been in the monastery at Glendalough these twelve months and more,” he offered.

“Ah! That would explain it!” Crimthann said. “Only a hermit could not have heard of us, our fame is so widespread.” He glanced over at Louis’s men. “It seems maybe your men are hermits as well, or at least have not laid eyes on a woman in a long, long time.”

Louis followed Crimthann’s gaze. Many of the men, the farmers, were staring at the women with undisguised curiosity, and a good part of desire mixed in. Louis smiled.

“They are what you Irish call bóaire and fuidir. Not proper soldiers. I guess they don’t have women such as yours back on whatever pathetic little farms they come from.”

Crimthann threw back his massive head and laughed loud. “There are not women such as mine anywhere in the world!” he said. “They perform in such places as I can get away with allowing them to. They help out in other ways.”

Louis was curious about those other ways, but this was neither the time nor place to explore that. What he wanted from Crimthann now was information. Traveling men such as merchants and players, Louis knew, heard a great deal about what was happening in the wide world.

“We fought some heathens who were coming up river. Coming for Glendalough,” Louis said. “Have you had any word of them?”

Crimthann nodded. “We’ve heard rumors,” he said. “Heard they made a bloody mess of the village Muirbech at the mouth of the River Avoca, and another a few miles in. We came across an Irish fellow, name of Kevin, and he had an army of a hundred men or so, but they were in too much of a hurry to stop for entertainment, even such as we can provide, which is the finest in the land.”

“You’ve heard word of the heathens, but have not seen them?” Louis asked.

“No, we’re keeping well away from the river. Because of the heathens.”

Louis nodded. “You might do well to keep clear of Glendalough as well,” he said.

“What?” Crimthann exclaimed. “And miss the fair? Have you any notion of how much silver will be flowing about the streets?”

“There’ll be no silver at all if the heathens make it that far,” Louis said.

“Ah, but they won’t!” Crimthann said. “I look at you and I see you’re a blood-minded one and you’ll never suffer a heathen to sack your city!”

Louis smiled. He wished he could share the big man’s certainty.

“But just to be safe,” Crimthann added, “We’ll remain here until we hear of you slaying all the bastards.”

“That seems a wise plan,” Louis said. He stood and called to his men and they reluctantly stood and fell into line again. A moment later they were on the move, shuffling past the caravan, men straining for a final look at the women who waved and sent them off with smiles not so innocent or demure.

They walked for another weary hour without reaching the dúnad. Louis was beginning to wonder if perhaps Colman had returned to Glendalough, if there was no camp waiting, when Lochlánn said, “Just over the rise ahead, Captain Louis. That’s where the camp will be.”

Louis nodded and relished the sense of relief. He was exhausted and famished and he could hear the grumbling behind like an undercurrent of noise, like rain on a roof. They crested the hill and Louis hoped above all things to see a spread of tents, or at least a wagon loaded with food. But what he saw first was none of those things.

What he saw first were men. One hundred, one hundred and fifty, perhaps, spread out on the field, tending fires, sharpening weapons, sleeping. There were several wagons, and he could see they were piled with the tents, kettles, barrels of food and ale for the dúnad. It was sight that surprised him, unexpected as it was, and filled him with joy when he realized what he was seeing. Father Finnian had returned, and he had brought with him an army of genuine men-at-arms.

And now the real fighting could begin.

In this year, moreover, many abandoned their Christian baptism and joined the Norwegians, and they plundered Ard Macha, and took out its riches.

The Annals of Ulster

Starri Deathless did not die. For some hours after the sun went down he moaned softly and shifted his head side to side with a slow and deliberate motion. His ax remained lashed in his clenched hand.

Thorgrim sat beside him as the stars overhead made their slow wheel around the sky. Starri grew quiet at last and Thorgrim thought he was gone, but he was only asleep, so Thorgrim slept as well. When he awoke, the sky was a pale overcast and Starri was still alive.

The crews of his four ships were gathered on the shore, building fires, fetching buckets of water, slinging kettles from tripods. Five rods further up the bank Ottar’s crews were doing the same, and inland Kevin’s men made ready to break their fast. Three armies, each acting as if the others did not exist.

Thorgrim gently pulled back the furs that covered Starri’s chest and then the cloth over his wound. He had to tug where the blood had dried on the bandage, and he did so as gently as he could. Starri moaned and shifted his head, but his eyes did not open.

The wound looked bad, but not as bad as it had the day before. It had closed up some and the bleeding had stopped. Thorgrim had an idea that they could sew it now, that any spirits that might have been there had fled. In any event, the hole left in the spear’s wake was closing up on its own. He wished he knew more about treating such things but he had little experience with it. Generally any man so badly injured as Starri was would have been dead already.

Starri Deathless…
Thorgrim mused.
You are well named. Maybe you can’t be killed.

He covered the wound again and put the furs back over Starri’s chest. Tending to that would have to wait; there were more pressing things now. He stood and picked up his mail shirt and slipped it over his head. He gestured toward Iron-tooth and Segan, who was watching from a few feet away, picked the weapon up and buckled the belt around Thorgrim’s waist.

“Harald, Godi, come with me,” Thorgrim said and the three of them walked to
Sea Hammer’
s bow and down the plank to the shore. Godi, following Thorgrim’s instructions, waiting until Thorgrim and Harald were on dry land before stepping onto the springy board.

Thorgrim ran his eyes over the open ground. The various camps lay spread out before him. From the Irish camp, and walking quickly in his direction, he could see Kevin and the small cadre that seemed to always be in his wake.
They are a shield wall
, Thorgrim thought.
They are like a shield wall blocking my advance.

“Hold up,” Thorgrim said to Godi and Harald and he could not hide the weariness in his voice. They waited until Kevin had reached them and bid them good morning. The Irishman ran his eyes over Thorgrim’s mail and the sword at his side. He spoke. Harald translated before Eoin was able to speak.

“Kevin asks, ‘where are you going? Is there some problem?’”

“Tell him I am going to kill Ottar Bloodax for his insults,” Thorgrim said. “Tell him there is no problem.”

Harald translated. Kevin nodded. He did not looked surprised. Then Kevin began to speak, and Thorgrim could hear the calm diplomacy in his voice, even if he could not understand the words. Whatever had been frightening Kevin the day before – and Thorgrim guessed it was Ottar’s ferocious unpredictability – Kevin seemed have made peace with it. And that made Thorgrim immediately  suspicious.

This time Eoin beat Harald to the translation. “My lord begs you will reconsider. Ottar spoke in haste, and without thinking, as he often does. My lord is certain he regrets his words.”

“Your lord is certain Ottar regrets his words?” Thorgrim asked. “Ottar told Kevin this?” He knew perfectly well that Ottar had said no such thing, but he was curious as to how Kevin would answer.

“Ottar did not say those words exactly,” Eoin translated. “But he has no wish for a war with your men. He said as much. Such bloodshed would be pointless, especially when there is a fortune to be had at Glendalough if we may all fight as one.”

Thorgrim looked off toward Ottar’s camp and considered that. He had no doubt that Kevin had told Ottar the exact same thing. But Kevin was not wrong that war between Ottar’s men and Thorgrim’s would be a bloody and pointless affair, and such a war would surely be the result of Thorgrim’s driving a sword into Ottar’s guts.

Ottar Bloodax might not understand that in some instances bloodshed could be pointless, but Thorgrim did. He felt his resolve slipping. With age had come reason and thoughtfulness, and he found those things asserting themselves over the heedless passion he had known as a younger man. Once again he did not know which course was the right one. He was not sure if reason was to be celebrated as wisdom or despised as weakness.

“Neither Ottar nor you will have any authority over me or my men,” Thorgrim said. “My men will take no orders from any but me.”

“Of course, of course,” Eoin translated, and Thorgrim could see the relief and pleasure on Kevin’s face. There was no relief or pleasure on Thorgrim’s face. He felt like a wolf cornered by hounds.

His gut told him to abandon this folly of a raid, that Kevin had played him like a flute and no good would come of it. But he could not abandon it now. No matter how sensible such a course of action would be, it would look like cowardice. His heart told him to kill Ottar, but satisfying as that might be in the moment, he knew that no good would come of that, either.

“Tell Ottar to stay away from me. Tell him that I will suffer no insult from him. I’ll kill him if he ever again shows a lack of respect to me or my men.”

“Yes, yes,” Kevin said. Thorgrim nodded. He wondered what form those words would take when they reached Ottar’s ears.
If
they reached Ottar’s ears. Which he did not think they would.

Eoin was speaking again. “My lord asks, ‘would this be a proper time to talk of our plans for Glendalough?’”

It was. Thorgrim called the captains of his ships together and they sat by the cooking fire and Kevin’s men sat as well and they talked. Thorgrim guessed this same scene had played out in Ottar’s camp, or would, Kevin and his men serving as the ambassadors between warring tribes, the Irishman bridging the divide between factions of Northmen.

Not much had changed from their first discussion on that rainy day in Vík-ló. Thorgrim and his ships would proceed up-river as far as they could. Kevin and his troops would follow along the shore. Except now Ottar would being going up river as well, and now they knew there would be resistance along the way, a strong and clever enemy dogging them, hitting and running, forcing them to fight their way upstream.

“Kevin says the men who were captured, the ones Ottar killed, they were fuidir, farmers called up for the service they owe their lord,” Eoin said. “They are not regular men-at-arms, not real soldiers. My lord does not think it will be any great problem to brush them aside.”

Thorgrim nodded. Some may have been fuidir, but not all. The men he had fought were trained soldiers, and they were well led. But he was done with talk. “Very well, then,” he said. “Let us move on to Glendalough.”

This, apparently, was Ottar’s opinion as well. Thorgrim stood and looked up the shoreline toward Ottar’s camp and he saw the men there were already loading their gear back aboard their ships. Shields were mounted on the vessels’ shield racks and the banners that had earlier been waving at the ends of their long staffs were gone, rolled up and stowed away.

“Ottar is eager to get away from us,” Thorgrim said to his men, ignoring Kevin and the other Irishmen. “And I am eager to see he does not. Let us get back to our ships. I am already heartily sick of the land.”

Kevin mac Lugaed watched the last of the longships slip off the shore and turn in the stream, its oars like the wings of a swan. He felt varied and contradictory emotions swirling around him.

He loathed those ships, of course, despised the very sight of them, as did most Irishmen. At the same time, he could not help but marvel at their beauty and wonder at the mystery of them. He had a passing knowledge of boats, but the workings of a ship like that, the skills needed to cross an ocean in such a thing, were beyond his comprehension. He envied the Northmen and the mobility that their ships gave them. And he hated them for that and for a hundred other reasons.

“My lord,” said Niall mac Olchobar, standing at Kevin’s right hand. Niall was Kevin’s most trusted advisor, chiefly because he had been loyal to Kevin even when Kevin had been merely one of the Lords of Superior Testimony, and not ruler of all that part of Ireland called Cill Mhantáin.

For Kevin, it had been a bloody road that led him to where he was. He had seen quite a bit of ugly battle, as had any in his position, and he had developed his own personal fighting strategies. They mostly involved always appearing to be in the thick of the fight while actually remaining out of harm’s way.

If a leader was wounded, Kevin was the one who would selflessly carry him to safety. If a shield wall was forming up, Kevin remained behind it, ready to strike down any coward who ran, or step in wherever a man fell, though for all his shouting and brandishing weapons he never seemed to find the opportunity. Such little tricks he found did a great deal for both his reputation and his longevity.

So it had been at the great battle at Vík-ló. He watched as Lorcan mac Fáeláin, his former lord, former
rí túaithe of Cill Mhantáin, was cut down in the fighting. He had watched Lorcan’s chief men, Senchan mac Ronan and Faelan, killed in earlier fights. He had witnessed many others killed as well. Indeed, so many had been killed in those days that when it was over Kevin found to his surprise that he was the most powerful man left standing in Cill Mhantáin.

Kevin mac Lugaed had a nose for opportunity, and following the fighting at Vík-ló the scent was strong indeed. He gathered up a handful of warriors and paid them silver from the various purses he had plundered in the aftermath of the fighting. With those men he spent the next few weeks consolidating power.

The task of establishing his authority was easy enough. The Northmen had killed just about anyone who might object to his doing so, and anyone still alive was quickly cowed by the sight of his growing and well-paid army. By the time Kevin settled himself in Lorcan’s former hall in the ringfort at Ráth Naoi, he was the rí túaithe, and there was no one left to challenge him.

“Yes, Niall?” Kevin asked. He was watching the Northmen’s ships as they pulled up river, a line of them moving against the stream. He had been right about the height of the water. Their ships would float for another six or seven miles before the river became too shallow for them to continue. And quite a lot could happen in six or seven miles.

“Lord, shall I get the men moving? Shall we prepare for our march?”

Kevin pulled himself from his reverie with a shake of his head. The morning might have been ugly indeed if he had not succeeded in keeping Ottar and Thorgrim apart, telling each what he wanted to hear about the other.

Thorgrim had always been reasonable, surprisingly reasonable for a heathen. Kevin had actually been able to do business with the man, to the benefit of them both. But Ottar was not like that. Ottar was completely insane in the most dangerous way.

Kevin had not quite appreciated the depth of his madness when he had first approached the man in his longphort south of the river mouth. Or perhaps he had appreciated it, and had ignored it, in hopes of making a profitable partnership. He had ignored the corpses of the men – traitors, Ottar had said – tied to stakes outside Ottar’s hall. He had ignored the bloody bruises of Ottar’s Irish slaves, the squalor in which Ottar and his followers lived.

But he could ignore the signs no longer. Even before Ottar had joined them at the Meeting of the Waters, Kevin received word of what he had done at the village at the river’s mouth. And he saw what Ottar had done to those unfortunates taken prisoner after the fighting. He should never have asked Ottar to join in the raid, he understood that now. The best he could do now was to make Ottar Thorgrim’s problem, not his.

“Yes, yes, Niall,” Kevin said, frowning at his own distraction. “Let’s get the men ready to march. I would like to move in an hour’s time.”

“A full hour, lord?” Niall looked surprised. “The ships will be way ahead of us by then, they’ll be lost to sight.” Niall had been with Kevin in his discussions with Ottar and Thorgrim. He understood the plan. The Northmen would advance up the river in their ships, the Irish would keep the river banks clear of any resistance. And after the surprise attack of the night before, no one doubted there would be resistance.

“Yes, the ships will be lost to sight,” Kevin agreed. “And so the heathens will not see us marching off to the north.”

“The north, lord?” Niall’s confusion was mounting.

“Yes, the north. Our plans have changed. There’s a way through these mountains to the north. We’ll take our men that way, make a wide circle around whoever these men are who attacked us. Come at Glendalough from the east.”

Niall hesitated but Kevin’s expression did not encourage comment. “Very well, lord, I’ll see the men ready to march in an hour’s time.” He turned and headed off, leaving Kevin alone on the river bank.